Although it cannot be seen by human eyes, infrared radiation can be felt as heat. NNSA uses it to learn more about nanoscience. It even developed technology for using infrared light for zapping rocks that’s out of this world.
National Nuclear Security Administration
June 16, 2025
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Although it cannot be seen by human eyes, infrared radiation can be felt as heat. It’s what some snakes use to sense their prey and what your toaster uses to warm your breakfast. NNSA uses it to learn more about nanoscience. It even developed technology for using infrared light for zapping rocks that’s out of this world.
Zapping Mars rocks for science
SuperCam, which was co-developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory and France’s Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, is an important tool for NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover, now exploring the Red Planet.
It fires an infrared laser at rocks, vaporizing a small part of them. This creates a bright plasma. The system then measures the colors of light in the plasma to determine what the rocks are made of. It can do this with soil, too, all without ever directly touching the material.
A previous iteration aboard the NASA Mars Curiosity rover, called ChemCam, pioneered the technique. Between them, they have fired their lasers at Mars rocks more than a million times in the name of science.
SuperCam also has a microphone equipped. “When it zaps a rock, it actually makes a sound,” said LANL’s Nina Lanza. “We can listen to that sound and learn something about the properties of the rock we’re analyzing.”
Machine learning reveals refreshing understanding of confined water, which could revolutionize desalinization
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) used infrared light to figure out that water behaves differently when it doesn’t have much room to move around. This has a wide range of uses, from energy storage and conversion to special membranes for water desalination.
It all happened in some carbon nanotubes, which the folks at LLNL know a lot about. Nanotubes are tiny tubes made up of carbon atoms that are narrower than a human hair – 80 times narrower! At this scale, water gets weird.
The LLNL scientists found that as they reduced the nanotubes’ widths, water – two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom – bonded (or didn’t and was disrupted) in a way usually found when the liquid is under incredible pressure. The scientists figured this out by measuring the trapped water’s infrared signature.
The team used artificial intelligence to brainstorm the possibilities based on what they were seeing. This allowed them to study how water behaved in different-sized nanotubes and at different timescales.
Through experiments reading the infrared signatures, team members found that atomic bond disruption occurs below about 1.2 nanometers, smaller than a strand of DNA.
Research at NNSA spans the entire electromagnetic spectrum – take a look at findings at other frequencies and how they help further the missions of the Nuclear Security Enterprise.